WEBVTT - Ep58 "What do brains teach us about whether AI is creative?" 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:08.200 What is creativity and how does it work in the brain? 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.840 Are all brains creative? And what does that tell us 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:16.160 about the evolution of species and the evolution of ideas? 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.000 How do the arts expose what's happening in the brain, 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.120 and what does that have to do with how cell 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:27.360 phones got their names? And why koala bears don't write novels. 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.519 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.320 neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in these episodes 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.400 we dive into our three pound universe to uncover the 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:55.040 most surprising secrets behind our daily lives. Today's episode is 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.880 about creativity. What is it and how do brains do it? 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.360 And why do human brains do it better than anyone 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.160 else in the animal kingdom? So I'm going to start 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.440 tangentially with two stories that have hit the news in 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:13.200 recent weeks. The first is that there are no fewer 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:18.800 than nine copyright infringement lawsuits raging in the courts right now, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.000 with groups suing Open Ai and Meta and other companies 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:27.200 for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, the groups suing 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:32.000 are creatives, they're writers, and they're suing because their books 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:38.240 were consumed in the training of these massive generative AI systems, 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.800 these large language models like CHATCHPT. So one of the 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:47.880 suits calls this quote systematic theft on a mass scale. 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.560 In other words, the suit asserts that these large language 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:57.400 models are producing nothing fundamentally new. They're just recycling the 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.520 old and they're remixing that in different way ways. Okay, 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:03.640 so that was one story. The second story in the 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:07.800 news is that the company under Armour made an advertisement 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:12.040 that featured a boxer named Anthony Joshua, and this set 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.840 off a firestorm on Instagram because this claimed to be 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:20.840 the first AI powered sports commercial. Now the critics are 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.280 hating on it because they say the ad is just 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:30.880 repurposing work from other humans other creatives without proper acknowledgment. 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.480 And the debate around both these stories is highlighting the 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:38.520 broad issue of whether AI is going to undermine human 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:44.400 creativity because it treats all the accomplishments of previous artists 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.200 just as training data for doing its own thing, for 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.960 generating its own content, which it then takes credit for. 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.560 So many creatives are arguing that AI is going to 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.440 diminish the value of human creativity. It simply remixes things 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.680 that act o people have done before it. So that's 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:06.359 what I want to talk about today, because human creativity 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:11.000 is the most important reason our species has achieved what 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.240 it has. When you fly over a forest and you 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.440 look down on it from an airplane, the species in 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:19.760 that forest are doing the same thing that they were 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.680 doing one hundred thousand years ago. There's no difference. But 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:26.080 when you reach your destination and you're coming into any 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:30.200 modern city, you can see that the landscape has been 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.320 so influenced by one single species that it looks like 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:39.520 a giant, colorful motherboard of buildings has risen out of 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.920 the ground. There's something really different going on about humans, 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.640 And it's a reasonable question to ask, why don't squirrels 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:55.040 design elevators, Why don't alligators invent speedboats? Why don't koalas 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:58.880 spend their free time building an internet to surf? So 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.280 we're going to get into that shortly. Let me just 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.360 say that the reason we are communicating over a podcast, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.440 shooting zeros and ones across the planet to transmit a 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:14.120 message from one human mouth to multiple human ears, is 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:18.240 because we are doing something very different than any other species. 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.720 We have occupied every corner of the planet. We have 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.400 a million human beings above the clouds at any moment 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.680 because of air travel. We have humans floating in the 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:33.520 International Space Station, and we've landed on other orbiting bodies 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.720 like the Moon, and our machines have landed on Mars. 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.080 And no other animal has even invented the wheel or 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:46.000 discovered fire, much less coordinated millions of its congeners into 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:50.560 kingdoms and nations. So let's be clear that there's something 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:55.320 very different going on with our species. Homo sapiens represents 0:04:55.760 --> 0:05:01.120 a runaway species, and that term the runaway species is 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:03.520 in fact the title of a book that I wrote 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:09.200 with my close friend Anthony Brandt. Anthony is a professor 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.760 of music composition at the Shepherd School of Music, which 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.200 is part of Rice University, and generally he is a 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.760 sharp and sensitive thinker about creativity and he's a real 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.839 student of the brain. So years ago he and I 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.279 were getting a cup of coffee and we started talking 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.120 about creativity from the psychology point of view, from the 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.880 neuroscience point of view, from the point of view of 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:36.839 artistic endeavor, and we realized that our views on this 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.719 converged so much so that we both learned a lot 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.719 and we realized that we had a framework for understanding 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.000 what the creative act is, and we ended up writing 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.080 this book together. So I called up Anthony today to 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:53.400 be part of this conversation with me, and I started 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:59.320 by asking him what NASA and Picasso have in common. 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.280 You know, back in nineteen seventy there was the famous 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:12.960 incident where the Apollo thirteen spacecraft completely lost power, three 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.680 astronauts lives hanging in the balance, and the NASA engineers 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.600 basically had just a few hours to improvise a solution, 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.280 and they had a very closed system. All they could 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:28.600 use to save those wonderful lives was what was on 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:33.560 board the spacecraft, and they had to use a shrink 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.040 wrap to help make an air scrubber. They had to 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.920 power the main capsule with the lunar module. Everything that 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.480 they did was spur of the moment, working together as 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.960 an amazing team bringing home the astronauts safely. Cut to 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.200 Picasso working alone in his studio near the turn of 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:56.400 the twentieth century painting this radical painting, the likes of 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.080 which no one had ever seen before, and he was 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.880 so nervous about it. He invited his mistress at the time, 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:07.760 his gallery distributor to come, and they laughed at it, 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.680 and he was feeling so uncomfortable and a shame. He 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:13.280 actually rolled up the painting and hid it in his closet, 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.320 but he kept feeling drawn to it, kept working on it, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.880 but still when he finished, he wasn't even quite sure 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.280 he was finished, rolled it up again, put it in 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:29.040 his closet for nine years, and then put it out 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.040 into the world and became one of the breakthrough paintings 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:36.080 of the twentieth century. Le Demoiselle Davignan. And so you've 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.720 got the NASA engineers working collaboratively, Picasso working all by himself. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.440 The NASA engineers with a very targeted result. What they 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.040 do has to work, it has to succeed otherwise the 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.280 astronauts parish. Picasso is doing something much more open ended 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.280 and speculative. He's inventing a new type of art. And 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.640 yet when you look carefully at what they were doing, 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:03.960 essentially their brains were doing very similar mental operations. They 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.320 were creating variations on things that were already there. They 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:10.600 were tearing up the world as they knew it and 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.160 putting it back together in new ways, and they were 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.280 mixing things in combinations that hadn't existed before, and each 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.880 was applying it in their own domain, but under the 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.840 hood of their brains what was happening is very deeply related. 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.440 And it seems to be the key with creativity, right 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:33.240 is absorbing everything in the world around you, absorbing your 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:37.880 own experiences, and then remixing them, making something new out 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.840 of it. And what we did when we wrote our 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.960 book together is outlined sort of three different ways that 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.319 this can happen, three different cognitive operations that the software 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.920 of the brain is running. So tell us about those 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:57.800 three operations. So we called them bending, breaking, and blending. 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:03.560 Bending is making a copy and altering it. So fonts 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.560 are a great example of bending. I mean, why do 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.520 we need different typefaces for the same letters. They convey 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.600 the same information. But we have this compulsion to bend, 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:19.400 and so we create this unbelievable proliferation of variations. Jazz 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.400 improvisation is a type of bending. Different car models are 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.439 a type of bending. Anytime you take a prototype and 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.760 you remake it in some way, that's. 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:33.559 A version of bending. So breaking involves taking something complete 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.360 and deconstructing it, tearing apart, pulling it apart into little 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:42.800 pieces that's what makes an LED screen possible. It's where 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.000 the birth of cell phones happened. Originally, there was only 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:50.120 one phone tower per urban area, and as a result, 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.000 only a few dozen people could get on their mobile 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.480 phones at the same time, and calls were dropping. It 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.719 was very frustrating, and then engineers at Bell Labs had 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.360 this idea, oh wait, what if we break up the 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.199 urban area into individual cells and give them each their 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:08.560 own tower, And then they design software so you could 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:10.840 drive in your car from one of those cells to 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:15.080 another without losing the call. And basically, modern mobile communication 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.199 was born out of that cognitive process of breaking and. 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:22.160 Not everyone is aware, but that's how cell phone gets 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.760 its name because the landscape is divided up into different. 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:30.520 Cells exactly exactly, and like so many things, that ingenuity 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:33.760 is hidden behind the scenes. We just take it for granted, 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:38.640 not realizing that this fundamental cognitive operation is responsible for it. 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.160 So blending, which is a term first introduced by our 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:46.800 colleagues Mark Turner and Jills Fauconnier, involves combining two or 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.800 more sources. And you know, a smartphone is a beautiful 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:55.360 example of a blend. Mermaids and centaurs are blends of 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.840 humans and animals. Compromise is a form of blending where 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.560 you work out with another person, Oh, you know, what 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:05.920 is our middle ground. I'll contribute something to the solution, 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:10.080 and you'll contribute to something to the solution. Blending is 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.839 so much a part of how we just approach our world. Again, 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.160 we take it for granted, but that's how we get 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:22.760 metaphors and house boats and fusion cuisine and so many 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:24.920 of the things that are familiar to us in our world. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.200 Actually, so let's talk about that for a second, about 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.560 the things that are hidden behind the scenes and the 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:48.280 things that are obvious. So one of the things about 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.680 the world of art is that the bending, breaking and 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:57.240 blending is overt, is done so that everybody can see it. 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:02.720 And in the case of scientific breakthroughs or technological breakthroughs, 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.720 it's typically covert, as in most people don't see the 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.520 things that's happening there. But the argument we made is 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.360 that it's actually the same processes happening under the hood. 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:14.280 Tell us about that. 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:18.240 Yeah, I think that's one of the art's great cultural contributions. 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:23.480 In a sense, they are contributing to science in externalizing 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:27.160 internal features of how our minds work in a way 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.440 that is often hard to see. You know, there's a 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.680 cool example with YouTube. When you're watching HD video, you're 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.440 actually not watching HD video. You're watching a mosaic of 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:44.400 different levels of resolution, where YouTube is monitoring your computer's 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:48.120 bandwidth in real time and sending the resolution that'll make 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.720 it through. And the hope is that if there's enough 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.400 HD in that stream, you just think you're watching a 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.640 perfectly wonderful HD video and you don't realize that it's 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.000 actually created by all these little fragments. 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:02.920 So you mean, what I'm seeing is some sort of 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.400 rough video, and then when my bandwidth is better for 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.280 a moment, I see the very clear high definition video, 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.560 and then I see some mixed up stuff in there. 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.520 If it's done well, it happens all so fast that 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:17.640 you don't notice the pebbles among pearls, and you just think, oh, 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:21.400 this is great, My streaming is working perfectly. I'm not freezing, 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.400 and so on and so forth. And if YouTube engineers 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:29.800 have done their job, the creativity is completely hidden and 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:31.840 you don't even know that it's there. You just think 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.760 you're watching a video. What's wonderful and significant about the 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.760 arts is that the goal is actually to share the 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.240 inner workings of the creativity and have it be out 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.960 in the open, so you see the bending, breaking and 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.480 blending in a way that everyone can share. There's an 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:53.720 exhibition that the installation artist Christian Markley made where essentially 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:58.720 he told the time by clips from movies that showed 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.880 a clock in the background at that specific time. So 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.120 the way that installation works is it runs twenty four 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.800 hours a day. You can show up at any time 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.240 you want and say as long as you want, and 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.800 each second is shown by a different scene from a movie. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.400 It's exactly the same principle at work in the YouTube, 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.440 but now you're actually experiencing the bending, breaking and blending 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:22.000 in front of you. 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.280 Okay. So one of the questions that comes up often 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:30.320 is you look at some new invention and you think, wow, 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.400 that came out of the blue. For example, in two 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.080 thousand and six, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, one 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.000 of the reporters there called it the Jesus phone, by 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:41.840 which he meant it was an immaculate conception, nothing like 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.920 that had existed before, and then it just showed up. 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.600 But in fact, every idea has a genealogy that can 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.880 be traced in this case. You know, in nineteen ninety three, 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:58.880 IBM had introduced a cell phone with a touch screen. 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.080 Now this was very you know, earlier technology, So it 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:03.920 was a big brick of a cell phone and it 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.240 had just allows you little touch screen. But the idea 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.760 is that there's a smooth progression from there to here. 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:14.160 And this is true of all ideas. And this doesn't 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.359 reduce anything about the amazingness of the idea, the importance 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:22.480 of the idea. But everything has a genealogy because we 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.720 are remixing what's already in there and coming up with 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:29.480 new versions of things. So the question is, you know, 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:31.480 how do new ideas evolve. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.560 So new ideas evolve, we would say through this cognitive 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.880 process of bending, breaking, and blending. We take our storehouse 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.880 with experiences and essentially our minds are like a food 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:48.120 processor that scrambles it all up and comes up with 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:53.480 new possibilities. And that ability to generate what ifs and 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:57.560 hypotheticals is frankly part of what makes it most fun 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.840 to be a human being. I don't think we appreciate 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.840 just how much improvisation is part of our daily lives. 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.080 I mean, having a conversation is an improvisation. You know, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.200 cookie dinner can be improvising. It takes a lot of 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:17.960 improvisation to raise your kids. Every time, we're making flexible solutions, 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.760 combining our inputs and coming up with some new wonderful 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:25.720 way to you know, entertain the kids or keep our 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.320 loved ones interested in us. We are being creative and 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.480 all of that relies on the bending, breaking and blending. 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.080 So given this, given that we absorb our world and 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.280 remix it and spit out something new, how does your 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:42.440 time and place matter? 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.200 So one thing very beautifully you've shared with your podcast 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.080 audiences is that a lot of our brains development happens 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.080 out in the world rather than in the womb. And 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.680 that makes us neurologically incredibly susceptible to our environment and 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:02.560 our upbringing. And you that with human creativity and our 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.439 way that we build community, and you end up with 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.840 incredible diversity around the world. I know this very well 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:14.160 in music my field, because you take somebody like Beethoven, 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:19.000 who was probably the most experimental, radical European composer of 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.919 his day, doing extraordinary things that were far ahead of 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.360 his time, but he never asked people to detom their 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:32.160 instruments to create beating. He didn't use the breathing into 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.879 a fluid for expressive purposes and make extraneous noises, and 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.880 consider that part of the drama. But that was happening 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:44.159 in honored traditions in Japan and the Far East at 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:47.520 the same time, halfway around the world. Their notion of 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:51.960 what was beautiful, what was meaningful was very different from Beethoven, 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.560 and to the people in each of those cultures, those 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:00.600 were complete, self contained, absolutely compelling worlds, and yet in 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:02.600 many ways not with much overlap. 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.280 That's right, and this is why all new ideas evolve 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.399 from the old based on your culture. One of the 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.280 pictures that we have in the book is the evolution 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:17.359 of Greek helmets through time, and it's fascinating to see 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.280 the way that the models evolve and change, but each 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.480 one is clearly a function of what came before it. 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.720 But if you look at war helmets from across the 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.199 world and some other place in the world, they are 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.399 quite different. And this is because we take whatever we 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.000 have around us, whatever we absorb, and we use that 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:43.320 as the fodder that we're operating on. So what's fascinating 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:48.560 is that humans are so compelled to bend, break and 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.239 blend all the time. We sort of never stop doing this, 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.240 and so tell us about that. 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:59.040 You know, sometimes there's this sphere everything that can be 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.399 done has already been done. There was even a book 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.240 at the turn of the twentieth century that said all 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.639 diseases had been cured. There was nothing left to do. 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.400 And you know, artists are always anxious. You know, it's 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.879 all been done, there's nothing new. But the story of 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.240 humanity is that there is no finish line because this 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:21.879 software is running in our brains all the time, and 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:26.119 just by bouncing off of what came right before us, 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:30.040 we're constantly pushing the envelope and going farther and farther. 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.800 And so, you know, you go from the stone age 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:38.760 of the very first knives to this amazing display in 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.120 countries like Polynesia of knives of every shape and size, 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.240 to you know, Swiss army knives and the latest gizmos 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.119 that are sold on late in ITV and on and 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:54.040 on it goes without stop, without stopping, and there's really 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.760 nothing where you can say, well, we reached the endpoint 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.119 and it can't get any better, including strativarious violins, where 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:05.160 now they're making them out of carbon fiber. They're lighter, 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.000 they are more durable, they don't warp in different weather 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.520 and people can't even tell the difference sometimes, and the 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:17.480 new instrument sounds just as beautiful as a strad umbrellas 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.000 you think, you know, most of us are like, okay, 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.080 the umbrella. You know, it's functional, it does what it 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.720 needs to do, keeps the rain off pretty much. People 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.000 have stopped working on that. Actually, so many people are 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.280 trying to make umbrellas that there are four people whose 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:35.879 full time job it is in the patent office to 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:40.200 review patents for new umbrellas. There's nowhere you look where 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:45.320 you say case closed, it's finished. Just stop right. 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.240 People are trying to patent umbrellas where the for example, 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.439 the ribs bend the other way, or it's asymmetrical for 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.360 the wind, or you wear it like a backpack, and 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:58.560 on and on. Yeah, exactly. And in your field in music, 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.400 how do you see that, this constant compulsion to bend, 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:04.480 break and blend. 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:09.280 Well, you see that in covers of songs in a 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:13.440 jazz improvisation, I mean, night after night, the same performer 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.560 will go and play the same wonderful jazz standard somewhere 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.359 over the rainbow. But it will never be the same 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:22.320 way twice. And you know, if you walked up to 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.560 that performer and said, well, you know, is that the 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.480 last time you're ever going to do this, then will 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.320 look look at you, you know, like what are you 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:34.520 talking about. The whole thrill of it is to constantly 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.480 reimagine and you know, come up with a new version. 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.800 And you see this bending, breaking and blending in language 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:42.920 all around us too. 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.639 Language is really built as a wonderful bending, breaking and 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.840 blending tool. For instance, there's fringe for lan slang where 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:56.240 syllables are flipped. So the word meshon, which means you're 0:21:56.280 --> 0:22:01.160 being mean, is sean May and originally it was developed 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.400 by you know, people in the underworld, so the Katalkan 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.160 code and the police wildn't understand what they were saying, 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:11.479 but verlong became so commonplace that now just everybody in 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:16.080 France uses it, and then abbreviations are great examples of breaking. 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:20.760 The word gymnasium is the Greek word for exercising in 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.359 the nude, and we very comfortably turned that into jim 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:31.119 with you know, a less exacting dress code and blending 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:39.320 happens all the time in composite words railroad, heart, throb, suitcase, etc. 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.439 And in fact, one of the interesting things is different 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:46.000 languages will blend different words to express the same idea. 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:49.920 So we call it a rail road. In French, it's 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.960 chamande fair, which means iron road. And part of the 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.760 fun of excavating languages is to see how different brains 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:01.159 in different communities are marring eye in different ways. 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:04.080 Yeah, you know, it's always been interesting to me how 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.720 invisible these blends become to us. For example, I think 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:10.560 it's the case that most people don't think about the 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:13.960 word rainbow as you know, a bow like a bow 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.520 and arrow that you get from the rain. But that's 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.320 how language evolves, is by putting things together like that. 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:24.200 Let's come back to this issue about science and art. 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:29.240 So one example that is very cool is with chimeras. 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.439 So in the world of art, there's this idea of 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.480 putting together different creatures. You mentioned a mermaid before, we're 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:38.960 putting together a woman and a fish, and you get 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:41.880 this mermaid. And what's interesting is that you see these 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.719 same kind of things happening in science. So tell us 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:48.080 about the goat named freckles. 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:53.120 So there's Freckles, a spider goat. How did that come 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:57.480 to be? Well, spider silk is one of the strongest 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:01.920 materials in nature and could potentially be used for things 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.040 like bulletproof bests. But the problem is it's very hard 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:10.080 to harvest spider silk. You put enough spiders together and 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:14.200 they eat each other. It takes literally millions of them 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:17.120 just to create a few square yards of silk. So 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.760 scientists were wondering, you know, is there a more efficient 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:23.199 way that we could produce this, And there was a 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:25.879 biologist who came up with the idea of splicing the 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:30.520 gene or spider silk into the genetic code of a goat, 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:35.040 and thus was born Freckles, the spider goat who secretes 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:38.679 spider silk in her milk. And they've been able to 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:45.000 harvest significant quantities of that by creating an actual, real 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:45.719 life chimera. 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:49.000 So is what is happening in the brain of a 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:53.000 chemist different than what's happening in the brain of a composer. 0:24:53.400 --> 0:24:56.760 To some degree, of course, it takes special expertise and 0:24:56.880 --> 0:24:59.320 knowledge to be a chemist. That's really different from the 0:24:59.359 --> 0:25:02.960 preparation that takes to write a piece of music. But 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:06.399 the amazing thing about human beings is that we apply 0:25:06.600 --> 0:25:10.679 our creativity to everything we do. So there is a 0:25:10.760 --> 0:25:13.199 part of what we are born equipped with that is 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:19.200 a general purpose creativity software that can be mobilized for 0:25:19.480 --> 0:25:23.200 anything we care to apply our creativity to. That, again, 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:26.200 is one of the superpowers that we have as a species. 0:25:38.600 --> 0:25:41.920 This is really what has launched humans into this success 0:25:42.000 --> 0:25:45.720 that we've had compared to all our animal neighbors. You know, 0:25:45.760 --> 0:25:49.680 we've erected skyscrapers and composed symphony and invent you know, 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:53.120 medicines and get to the moon and stuff like that. 0:25:53.240 --> 0:25:57.600 Because each generation that's born doesn't have to you know, 0:25:57.800 --> 0:26:00.239 just live the life of what happened before them, they 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:03.440